Twenty years of waiting! That’s 140 dog years! Which just shows how Argos hanging on to see Odysseus one more time before “the dark shadow of death closed down on Argos’ eyes” is an excellent reminder of the utter loyalty that animals have for the people they love.
The entire twenty years that Odysseus was away from Ithaca fighting various wars and mythical monsters, Argos waited patiently at home for his human to return before. (A note that some of the descriptions below include spoilers, but, then again, you knew what was going to happen as soon as that animal appeared on the page, right?)Īny list of classic literary animal death scenes must begin with Argos, Odysseus’s dog. These books will absolutely make you cry, but they’ll also make you hug your animal friends a little closer. The following books where, yes, the dogs (and other animals) do die, are, to me, about the joy that comes with a life filled with non-human creatures. There is something so good about being around animals that outweighs that terrible sorrow at the end. What’s remarkable is that, both in literature and in our lives, despite the sadness and despair we feel after the deaths of animals, we continue to welcome new animals in. Books that dig into this hard truth are simply reflecting the reality of a life spent surrounded by non-human animals.
To know and love animals is to face their inevitable deaths. (This website is also incredibly helpful if you are writing a book about pet death.)īut before we blame authors and filmmakers for trying to trick us into shedding a tear, consider this: As anyone who loves animals knows, the problem with having pets is that they simply do not live as long as people do (tortoises and parrots aside). Want to make your audience hate the villain? Have them kick a dog.” There is whole website ( ) that allows people to look up movies before viewing them to check if a dog (or another animal) gets hurt or killed. Want to make your audience love the hero? Have them save a cat. Arthur Chu wrote for Salon, “It’s widely acknowledged that people get much more distressed over the death of a dog or a cat in a movie than of a human being. To grow attached to a character only to have them killed off can feel like the animal exists on the page just to pull at the readers’ heartstrings. Oh crap, you might think, how long until this one dies?
There’s a certain dread that comes when you first encounter an animal character in a book.
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